Die 5 besten Treueanwendungen für Spielhallen

28.08.2026

Why amusement arcades need a different approach to loyalty

Loyalty software assumes a shop, and an arcade is not one. An arcade sells no item with a cost price. It takes money into machines, gives a proportion back in cash and in tickets, and what survives is cut again by the operator's share on rented equipment and by Machine Games Duty on the machines that pay out in cash. The lever you fully control is the ticket board: what a prize costs in tickets, and what that prize cost you by the case. So the cheapest thing you can give away is rarely a discount and almost always play credit, priced in your own currency.

Then the shape of the transaction, which is what breaks most schemes. A three-hour family visit is two hundred separate plays, and not one of them is a transaction software could see. The only event with a number attached is the top-up: £10, £20 or £50 loaded onto a cashless play card at a recharge kiosk. A scheme built on visits treats a quiet Sunday tenner and a £60 birthday party as the same event. Cinemas hit the same wall from the other side, where loyalty apps for independent cinemas have to catch concession spend the ticket barcode never sees.

The person who plays and the person who pays are also different people. The child has the play card and the ticket balance. The adult has the debit card, decides when to stop, and is the only one of the two you can hold a marketing relationship with, so the loyalty card belongs in their phone. Worth being firm about, too: a family scheme belongs to the Category D side of the floor, the cranes, pushers and ticket redemption, not the adult gaming area.

Seasonality here is more extreme than in almost any trade, and it runs two ways. A resort or pier site lives on the summer holidays, Easter and half terms, trades hardest when the weather turns bad in season, and either shuts or drops to weekends from November to March. A city-centre site is the opposite shape: evenings, Friday and Saturday, barely weather-sensitive. Both need a programme that can go quiet for months and be woken by one message. Escape rooms sit at the indoor end of that swing, filling when the weather turns, so loyalty apps for escape rooms are judged on waking a dormant list.

The physical constraint cuts both ways. You have the machine count you have. At peak you are capacity-bound, and the last thing you want is a promotion pulling more people onto a floor already three deep at the penny falls. Off peak, every machine stands idle, and the cost of somebody playing it is close to zero beyond a prize payout you have already priced.

Staffing is the constraint nobody costs properly. Arcade labour goes on floats and hopper refills, restocking crane cabinets, clearing note validator faults, and manning the redemption counter, busiest in the last forty minutes before closing when every child arrives at once with a bucket of tickets. Any scheme that adds a lookup there will be abandoned within a fortnight, by the staff rather than by you.

What to look for in an amusement arcade loyalty app

Earning tied to the top-up. A £50 load and a £10 load are different customers and the card should say so.

A card that sits beside the play card. They already carry one piece of plastic for your machines, so the second belongs in their phone.

Nothing to do at the redemption counter. Scanning happens at the recharge kiosk, never in the closing-time ticket queue.

Messaging that survives a closed season. You need to reach February from last August, with no transaction to hang it on.

A flat price that does not tax a good summer. Per-visit pricing charges you most in the month you least need help.

The 5 best loyalty apps for amusement arcades in 2026

1. Perkstar — best for rewarding the size of the top-up

Best for: Arcades wanting a wallet card alongside the cashless play card, earning on the amount loaded, with nothing to integrate.

Perkstar starts where this trade starts: there is nothing to integrate with. The card is added to Apple Wallet or Google Wallet by scanning a QR code, with no app, no account and no password, and staff scan it from a phone or tablet with no till connection required. Your recharge kiosks, card issuers and ticket balances are untouched.

Stamp cards are the sensible starting configuration, and they earn per visit or on spend, one stamp per a stated number of pounds. Set it at one stamp per £5 and the arithmetic fits the way arcade money arrives: a £20 top-up earns four stamps, a £10 top-up earns two, a party loading £50 earns ten at once. A family loading £20 a visit completes a ten-stamp card on their third visit; a regular loading £10 gets there on their fifth.

Points do the same job as a running balance, at ten points per pound with the reward at 500 points: the same £50 of loading, better suited to sites where top-ups swing between a fiver in passing and a £60 party.

The reward should be play credit, and that is where the economics fall your way. Five pounds of credit against £50 loaded is ten per cent at face value, but the real cost is only the prize payout on that £5 of play, at the ticket rate you set, and most of it is spent on a quiet afternoon on machines that were standing still.

Free wallet push messaging on every plan, with no cost per message and no cap on customers, makes an off season workable: two thousand families signed up in August can all be messaged at Easter for nothing. Promotions add a timed earning boost with your own artwork on the front of the card while it runs, so a double-stamp week over February half term is set on the Monday and visible on the wet Wednesday.

Membership cards are worth having alongside rather than instead. They carry a tier and its benefits and update when the scheme changes without reissuing, which suits a locals' card at a resort site.

Charges: Starter £19/month, Growth £39/month, Scale £79/month, with a 7-day free trial and no card needed to start. Flat monthly with unlimited customers. Flat monthly with unlimited customers, so an August with thousands of live cards costs what February costs.

Main limitation: Stamps are applied by a member of staff scanning the phone, so an arcade wanting the recharge kiosk to credit the card automatically with nobody present will not get that here.

2. Loopy Loyalty — best for a single site that wants a plain wallet stamp card

Best for: A one-site arcade wanting a wallet stamp card with no till, no app and little to configure.

Loopy Loyalty is a dedicated digital stamp-card tool, wallet-native in the same way, with the card going into Apple or Google Wallet from a QR code and no app or account. It needs no till, and staff stamp from a companion app on their own phone.

The limitation is squarely the one that matters. It is a stamp-card tool where staff add stamps at the counter, rather than a points engine driven by a spend rule, so the grandparent putting £5 on in passing and the family loading £60 for a birthday get the same thing. Push messaging is basic, thin for waking a list after a five-month shutdown, and there is no membership function.

For a small independent arcade running one card design at one site, that may be enough, and the price reflects it.

Charges: From $25/month (USD) on Starter for one card design at one location, $69/month on Growth for three designs and three locations, and $95/month on Ultimate above that, at the time of writing.

Main limitation: It is a stamp-card tool where staff add stamps at the counter, rather than a points engine driven by a spend rule.

3. Loyalzoo — best for arcades selling an unlimited-play pass

Best for: Family entertainment centres running a paid unlimited-play or season membership that needs recurring billing behind it.

Loyalzoo does points or stamps, integrates with a number of till systems and can also run standalone, so it is not shut out by the fact that play money never crosses an ordinary point of sale. Earning and rewards can be restricted to specific items, useful in a mixed site. Its real differentiator is subscriptions and memberships with recurring billing built in.

The problem is what the customer carries, which is nothing. There is no card and no app; customers are looked up by name or phone number, which puts the scheme on staff at the moment an arcade has least attention to give. Picture the redemption counter at ten to closing, a queue of children with buckets, and someone asking each parent to spell a surname.

With no card, its reach is broadcast SMS and email rather than anything sitting in a phone, and it is the most expensive option here.

Charges: From $77 a month in US dollars, rising to $167 a month on the higher plan, at the time of writing.

Main limitation: No customer-held card at all, so every earn and redemption becomes a staff lookup by name or phone number.

4. Square Loyalty — best for sites already taking money through Square

Best for: Arcades whose cafe, party bookings and card top-ups genuinely all run through Square terminals.

Square Loyalty requires Square at the point of sale, and that one requirement settles most of this trade. Where it is true it works well: points scale automatically with spend, so a £40 party payment and a £6 coffee weigh correctly, earning takes a phone number at the till, and customers can add a digital loyalty pass to Apple Wallet.

Where it is not true, and in most arcades it is not, the scheme sees only the slice that went through Square. If the recharge kiosks come from your cashless provider, as they usually do, the largest number in the building is invisible and you reward the cafe rather than the floor. Messaging is transactional only, sending automatic texts on earning and rewards but unable to send a campaign, which for a site that shuts in November is close to disqualifying.

Pricing is banded by monthly loyalty visits per location, so a resort arcade clearing two thousand loyalty visits in August pays the top band that month and the lowest in February, multiplied per site.

Charges: £25, £45 or £65 per calendar month per location, set by monthly loyalty visits at up to 500, 501 to 1,500, and above 1,500, at the time of writing.

Main limitation: It only rewards money passing through Square, which in most arcades excludes the top-up kiosks entirely.

5. Stamp Me — best for a regular local following

Best for: City-centre arcades and bar-arcades with a settled local crowd who visit weekly and will happily install something.

Stamp Me is established and has the fullest marketing toolkit here: push notifications, SMS marketing, birthday rewards, automated campaigns and lapsed-customer messaging, which maps onto the regular who stopped coming in March.

It requires its own app, though, and customers must download and register. That is the hardest ask in this trade. A resort arcade's August list is largely holidaymakers who will be home in Derbyshire by Saturday, standing on a seafront with patchy signal and a child in one hand. Ask them to install an app and create an account, and you lose most of them.

For an urban site with the same two hundred people every week, the download is a smaller obstacle and the campaign tooling earns its keep.

Charges: Three tiers, Lite, Pro and Elite, billed monthly with no setup fee and a 30-day free trial, at the time of writing.

Main limitation: Customers must download and register in an app, a heavy demand on walk-in holiday trade.

Quick comparison

The columns below are what an arcade decides on: cost across a swinging season, whether top-up size counts, whether you can reach people in the months you are shut, and what joining asks of a parent on a busy floor.

Platform	What it costs	Earns on the size of a top-up	Reaching customers off season	What the customer has to do to join
Perkstar	Starter £19, Growth £39 or Scale £79 a month, flat, unlimited customers	Yes, one stamp per a stated number of pounds, or points on spend	Free wallet push on every plan, no cost per message	Scan a QR code, card lands in Apple or Google Wallet, no app or account
Loopy Loyalty	From $25 a month for one design at one site, $69 for three, $95 above	Stamp card — staff add stamps at the counter, rather than a points engine driven by a spend rule	Push messaging to cardholders	Scan a QR code, card lands in Apple or Google Wallet, no app or account
Loyalzoo	From $77 a month, rising to $167 a month on the higher plan	Yes, points or stamps on spend, and earning can be limited to chosen items	Broadcast SMS, email and push notifications	Give a name or phone number to a member of staff, no card to carry
Square Loyalty	Between £25 and £65 per month per location, banded by monthly loyalty visits	Yes, points scale with spend, but only spend taken through Square	Automatic texts when customers earn points and unlock rewards	Give a phone number at the till, then optionally add a pass to Apple Wallet
Stamp Me	Three tiers, Lite £39, Pro £49 and Elite £129 a month, with a 30-day free trial and no setup fee	Not stated, its published material does not set out spend-based earning	Push, SMS, automated campaigns and lapsed-customer messaging	Download the app and register an account

Which one should you choose?

Loopy Loyalty has the strongest case of the four rivals for a small independent site: wallet-native, no till, cheap, and if your average top-up barely varies then counting visits loses you little.

Loyalzoo earns its place if you sell a paid pass. Recurring billing for an unlimited-play wristband or a monthly locals' membership is real infrastructure. You pay for it with a scheme that lives entirely in staff lookups.

Square Loyalty is right in one case and wrong everywhere else: if top-ups, cafe and party payments all go through Square terminals, it is well built and nearly automatic. Stamp Me suits the urban arcade with a settled weekly crowd, where the campaign tooling justifies the download.

For most arcades, Perkstar is the one whose shape matches the trade. It rewards the top-up rather than the visit, the only number in the building worth measuring, and it attaches to nothing, so the cashless system, the kiosks and the ticket board carry on untouched. The card goes into the phone of the adult with the debit card in a few seconds, without an app. The price is flat, so the August that generates two thousand cards costs what the February that generates ninety costs, and getting those families back at Easter costs nothing per message. Set against a reward paid in play credit on idle machines, it is one of the few marketing costs here that stays fixed while the season does not.

What an amusement arcade setup actually looks like

Concretely, rather than as a template:

Run a stamp card at one stamp per £5 loaded, completing at ten stamps. Staff scan the phone at the recharge kiosk as the top-up is taken, the one calm moment in the interaction, and never at the redemption counter. A family loading £20 a visit earn four stamps a time and complete on their third visit; a regular loading £10 completes on their fifth. Ten stamps is £50 loaded either way.

Make the reward £5 of play credit loaded onto the play card, not a prize and not money off. At face value that is ten per cent of the £50 that earned it, but the cost to you is only the prize payout on £5 of play at the ticket rate you set, and most of it is spent on a quiet weekday afternoon on idle machines. Do not reward in tickets: they come off prize stock at full cost and hand the rate to the customer.

Put the QR code where somebody is standing still with a free hand: the faceplate of every recharge kiosk, because they have stopped there with a phone out already, and the queue rail at the redemption counter, at adult eye height, because whoever is waiting for a ticket count has three minutes and nothing to read.

Consider a membership tier card alongside for locals at a resort site, with the stamp card left as the main programme. Because a membership card updates when the scheme changes without reissuing, you can adjust what the tier includes between seasons without asking two hundred people in for a new one.

Message twice a season and no more: one before the February half term with a double-stamp week attached, run as a timed promotion so your artwork sits on the card front while it lasts, and one in the week before the Easter holidays. Do not message in mid-August, when the floor is full and every extra visitor stands behind somebody at the pushers.

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